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Dir (command)

Shell command for listing files and directories

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The command is often implemented as internal in the operating system shell instead of as a separate application as many other commands are.

Variants

Although syntax, semantics and implementations vary, a dir command with essentially the same functionality is available in the operating systems: CP/M, MP/M, ISIS-II, iRMX 86, CDOS, TRIPOS, DOS, 4690 OS, OS/2, Windows, Singularity, ROM-DOS, ReactOS, GNU, AROS, VMS, RT-11, RSX-11, OS/8, 86-DOS, MS-DOS (in versions 1 and later), and DOSBox.

Some applications also provide a dir command with similar functionality. The typical File Transfer Protocol (FTP) command-line client provides a dir command for listing a remote directory. The numerical computing environments MATLAB and GNU Octave include a dir command.

Generally, Unix-like systems use the ls command for the needs that dir satisfies in other types of systems. Notably, the Unix-like GNU operating system, provides a dir command that is equivalent to ls -C -b; that is, by default files are listed in columns, sorted vertically, and special characters are represented by backslash escape sequences.

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